Monday, September 12. 2016

As moderator and outside observer of the exhibit Streaming Egos I want to say a few personal words about each pavilion, as well as the event as a whole. The exhibition opened up a major door on the question not only of who we are, but who we are as national identities, in our extended web realities, where our egos “stream”... But as we all know — whether on or offline — the self is a construction of voices and narratives, yet it is never something that was already there before it was seen, perceived, narrated.
Continue reading "The Streaming Egos Convention – Afterthoughts..." »

Friday, March 18. 2016

The challenge of "Streaming Egos", a unique initiative on the raum: online artistic residencies platform, was to create four online projects based on the theme of “Identity in the digital era”.

The work process was very organic and dialogue between the three parties – the curator, the artist and the designer/programmer - was absolutely key. In addition to overseeing the entire project, the curator moderated and channelled the ideas between artist and designer. To successfully devise the four projects, we needed to go beyond our creativity and knowledge of web programming in order to understand each artist’s body of work, as well as their individual creative process. Only by doing this was it possible to shape and adapt the artists’ ideas to the online medium.

As the project developed, two interpretations emerged from the Portuguese artists’ work: national and personal identity. For Paulo Mendes and Pedro Portugal’s projects, which depicted Portuguese identity during the 20th century, albeit in different contexts, we focussed on the idea of archive. For Paulo Mendes’ Policy of the People, proposals for atemporal tourism in Portugal, we designed a layout reminiscent of a printed magazine, using appropriate graphics so that Eduardo Lourenço’s text was interpreted with and accompanied by every decade’s particular style. The idea of archive was also used by Pedro Portugal for his Europa Augen, a digital record of every country’s entries for the Eurovision Song Contest, where the user can filter and navigate the videos by country or decade.

For André Alves’ Identities, we devised something that reflects the artist’s doubts and uncertainties regarding the identity / entity binomial. Here, the layout is deconstructed in a fluid narrative, while the user navigates on the page until they come across a relational word table which constructs meaning, while providing access to texts and videos. Finally, for Claudia Fischer’s Closer to Home, we decided to create a film narrative using a collection of photographs taken in different observatories throughout the world, which also gives access to a video on a loop showing a moment from one of the artist’s trips.

In addition to the interest and discourse of each project, one of our main objectives was to create a scenario in which all four projects could coexist. This was visible and became possible with the collective exhibition that brought all the countries together in Düsseldorf.

Friday, March 11. 2016

The collective endeavour Mutant Geographies was the result of the first phase of the Portuguese contribution to the international project, Streaming Egos – Digital Identities. Using the theme proposed by the project’s curatorship, that of reflecting upon the world of digital identities, we wanted to focus on issues related to Portugal and Europe’s identity and how they are represented during a time strongly characterised by transnational and relational culture.

We invited the artists André Alves, Claudia Fischer, Paulo Mendes and Pedro Portugal to devise digital projects that, in some way, reflected their perspectives on the theme and characteristics of their art. Although these artists do not usually work with digital forms, the resulting online artistic projects were fascinating. The premise was not to turn physical projects into digital ones, but rather to create possibilities, so that new types of artistic intervention specifically produced for that environment could be developed. These could then take visual, written, sound, cinematographic or other forms, specifically produced for the online platform. And, indeed, as this project has demonstrated, for many creative professionals working primarily with physical materials and spaces, this is a medium that offers a multitude of opportunities for research and intervention.
Continue reading "Notes on Mutant Geographies" »

Thursday, March 3. 2016

In 1955, BBC staffer George Campey proposed the name EUROVISION to the Corporation’s management as a snappier alternative to the initial title “Continental Television Exchange Song Contest”. The BBC accepted the name, although it continued to use the longer version in official documents. EUROPA AUGEN is a project in which the images used to introduce the songs from the EUROVISION contests from 2004 to 2015 are combined and edited to create a record in the likeness of the flag proposed by Koolhaas and the digital standardisation employed in bar codes and data storage.Continue reading "Pedro Portugal - Europa Augen (final project)" »

Thursday, February 25. 2016

This project is about the construction Portugal's identity – identities, iconographies, codes, symbolic rhetoric from the Estado Novo era up to the democratic present: the geographical sphere, marked by a pattern; the percentage changes of a curve on a Cartesian plane intended to make explicit the properties of a function; history sold as deceptive advertising, lost in an email spam folder, historical lies reduced to electronic rubbish. National monuments of patriotic incontinence! Political identity, touristic identity, international identity: “Portugal is not a small country”.
Continue reading "Paulo Mendes - POLICY OF THE PEOPLE (final..." »

Friday, February 19. 2016

Homonymy (namesakes) is an essential strategy for blurring identities within a global landscape of both physical and digital tracking and surveillance, a vital tool for freedom of thought and action. The vocation of AHA (Association des homonymes anonymes) is to develop and stimulate all types of homonym culture by all necessary means. AHA provides an administrative, psychological and strategic support group for all homonyms, whether authentic or not including wannabes. During the convention, AHA presented its first case study: the Camille Martin Project.
Continue reading "Homonomy and identiy – impressions from the..." »

Wednesday, February 17. 2016

CLOSER TO HOMECloser to home is part of the research project investigating concepts of periphery and deals with our perception of the world as a grid of parallels and meridians. The viewer becomes something of a traveler, moving between the familiar and the strange, and between the self and the other, a reciprocal relationship in which identity is constantly reinvented.
Continue reading "Claudia Fischer - Closer to Home (final project)" »

Friday, February 12. 2016

IDENTITIESIdentities was born of an interest in the relationship between contemporary subjects and the status of words and text, their importance and the evolution of their potential in the new media landscape. Foregoing solutions of a visual nature, Identities began as a collection of written poems, aphorisms and thoughts surrounding these relationships. These purely textual/poetic interpretations quickly turned into acoustic and visual explorations using simple resources and the collaborative opportunities provided by the internet, becoming in the process a commentary on the impact of these devices.
Continue reading "André Alves - Identities (final project)" »

Thursday, February 4. 2016

A salon talk on exquisite props (made possible thanks to a kind loan from the Düsseldorf theatre) was the highlight of our project “Revitalise the salon culture in the digital age”. The debate took place on January 16, 2016, during the convention "Streaming Egos - Digital Identities" in Düsseldorf. 40 scientists, artists and net specialists from six countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, Germany) came together to present and discuss the works of their country groups.

In my salon the participants of the German country group Martina Pickhardt, Enno Park as well as PD Dr. Peter Goßens and Prof. Bernadette Wegensteinwere invited. Unfortunately, two of them fall ill, but still could take part via Hangout. Many thanks to Gunnar Sohn, who had to improvise a lot in order to make sure that all participants were heard and seen and who realized the live streaming of all talks and performances.

Topics of the salon conversation were madeleines, archives, memories, memes and how we can use digital media for transnational discourse.

On 14 January, the Portuguese contribution to the European project “Streaming Egos – Digital Identities” has been presented in the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, as a pre-launch to the international Convention in Düsseldorf where all participating country groups presented their works.
The Portuguese contribution titled Geografias Mutantes / Mutant Geographies has been curated by Sandra Vieira Jürgens and was developed in cooperation with the raum: residências artísticas platform. It consists of projects by the four artists André Alves, Claudia Fischer, Paulo Mendes and Pedro Portugal which have been designed particularly with regard to their digital representation.